Editors' Review

This software helps you organize your photos into a database. You can attach various data, such as event, persons, location, and notes, to your pictures. Digital Photo Librarian allows you to create any number of custom information fields. You can create a simple Web gallery or autorun CD from your images, or e-mail the lot of them. The program includes some perfunctory image-editing features. Though those are not its strongest features, we did like that we could immediately see our changes applied. The trial version's limitation of 20 images makes it tough to fully evaluate the app. If you can get past the sometimes-confusing interface, Digital Photo Librarian offers a good method for organizing large image collections.

Publisher's Description

+

From O'Neil Software:
Digital Photo Librarian is a comprehensive solution for professionals or knowledgeable users who have hundreds or thousands of photos. It implements a systematic approach to cataloging your pictures by date, person, event, or location. Digital Photo Librarian provides for either direct input from scanners or from a variety of picture file formats. It supports built-in photo-editing capabilities for rotating, cropping, brightening, sharpening, and fixing red-eye in your photos. It also provides simple, easy-to-use, full-screen picture-show capabilities, which allows you to tailor a slide show to your audience.

This is Product is EXACTLY what it is advertised to be, a Digital Photo Library. This program is a very effective at what it is supposed to do, and that is to create a very detailed library of large volumes of digital photos. I have approximately 2.5Tb of digital photos that are broken down into databases using this program. It is a very stable and excellent library. The information that can be attached to each photo is virtually unlimited. This program is capable of tagging multiple photos with the same information at the same time, or individually selecting for precise information.

O?Neil has also gone to great lengths to ensure that the integrity of each photo is maintained in the database. You can choose what level of archiving and compression you want.

Selection for import and export is a snap. With a searchable filter, finding the precise photo, or group of photos, that you are looking for is very easy. Once selected, you can export them to any location.

This program does have some photo editing abilities, but that is not the intent or strengths of this program. This is a very strong digital photo library. If you are looking for a photo manager with editing capabilities to handle a couple hundred, or a couple of thousand photos, there are many free ones out there. However, if you have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of photos, as I do, this is the library program for you.

I have used this program for several years now and have absolutely no complaints.

Cons

None, this is a digital library that does exactly what it is supposed to do.

There are a few nice features in there (such as drag-n-drop over the database window), but overall the application is a bit sluggish, even in the rather custom interface. Do we really need huge buttons in an image editing interface? Shouldn't the screen real-estate be saved for the images???

Many features need polishing. I won't go into all of them, but for instance you can drag-n-drop your images in bulk to the database window. This is a must since you don't want to add them with the file dialog one at a time. Next step is to add the information to each photo. Since this information is shown next to the thumbnails (in fact it uses 5X the space the thumbnails do) you click on a field to change, which brings up a paned dialog which is not even set to the info pane you selects. Why not allow the user to enter (non-modally!) into the fields? If you're going to try to be slick with the interface, focus on functionality, not huge buttons.

If you have pictures from your digital camera or scanner, you know they pile up fast. How do you associate information with the pictures? How do you find the picture you are looking for amoung 1000s? A true database that is too easy to use. Try it, you'll have your credit card out within the hour!

I like the data base approach to the photo information as well as the ease of editing, adding and sorting the photos by any one of the data fields. The feature of importing photos, and inserting information for all ph0tos in a "lot" approach is terrific. Also the feature of capturing the date from the recorded date by a digital camera makes dating s snap.
I am limiting the size of the album/file to the size of a CD, so that I can store and mail "albums" in their entirety.
I have suggested this SW to all my friends and family.

DPL is really terrific...can handle 1000's of images, sequencing is rich in options...great sound features. Best of all, the author is online everyday, answers questions, and expands capability directly in response to user needs.... a terrific package and terrific support. Get it. you wont be sorry.

What a relief to find this application. Yes, it may not have all the bells and whistles of other 'sexier' photo databases...but it has the important ones! In minutes, I was able to create a photo album, enter descriptive information (date, persons, etc..) and sort them. Within 30 minutes I was customizing the photo album, looking at a tailored side show, creating a screen saver and learning how to upload thumbnails to a web site! I really liked the customizing of data fields to suit my sort needs.

E-mail This Review

Thank You, !

Report Offensive Content

If you believe this comment is offensive or violates the CNET's Site Terms of Use, you can report it below (this will not automatically remove the comment). Once reported, our staff will be notified and the comment will be reviewed.